The Challenge

SAIL is a Quebec-based outdoor equipment retailer with a successful and established business in its home province, including five superstores. Upon opening two 70,000 square foot superstores in Ontario, they found that sales results were well below plan despite heavy investment in marketing.

The Insight & Strategy

Our agency spent some time talking to key stakeholders, including client staff, customers and non-customers who shopped elsewhere for outdoor equipment and clothing. The key insight that came out of the interviews, surveys and workshops was that the store itself — and the shopping experience — was the core of the brand and the most important differentiator. How do you make a retail shopping experience both compelling and memorable? If SAIL is the ultimate outdoors superstore, then we would find the ultimate outdoors customer to be the brand hero. Who is the outdoors customer of mythical proportions? Sasquatch, of course.

The Execution

We created a fully integrated campaign including TV, print, digital, SM and DM that focused on Sasquatch finding comfort and performance in the great outdoors with the help of SAIL. The TV spots feature great scenery; pitch-perfect casting of our Sasquatch hero, and humour to drive home the message that even Sasquatch needs SAIL to truly enjoy the outdoors. We integrated the outdoor footage with our hero with beautiful panoramas of the store (the great indoors!) to create a memorable and benefit-focused message to the consumer.

The Result

Within months of campaign launch, we saw a significant upswing in sales. Within a year of campaign launch, GTA stores surpassed plan and have continued to perform at or above the top stores in Quebec. This has given the client the confidence to open more stores near the GTA; by the end of 2014, SAIL will have a total of 6 stores in Ontario.